The Supreme Court of Canada recently granted leave to appeal in a BC case that raises important right to silence issues. It's worth watching closely.
The case, R. v. Singh, raises the issue of how far the police can continue to press a suspect during an interrogation in the face of repeated assertions of the right to silence. In the BCCA, the Appellant asked for a bright-line rule that would force the police to cease questioning as soon as the RTS was asserted. This argument was a daring one given the avalanche of appeal court authority to the contrary. Nonetheless, on the facts the police certainly pushed hard in the face of numerous attempts by the suspect to end the interview, going so far as to rebuff numerous requests by the Appellant to go back to his cell. Moreover, although a bright-line rule has been almost uniformly rejected, the case law is far from clear as to precisely when the police must stop questioning. True, they must not overbear the will of the suspect, but what exactly does this mean in the real world? It may be that the problem is insurrmountable given the nature of the test being employed. In any event, GFN is very curious as to what the SCC will do in Singh.
